


Since The House Is On Fire, Let Us Warm Ourselves

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-18 06:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I didn't realise that it was the Silver Queen's <i>heart</i> you were trying to get inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Since The House Is On Fire, Let Us Warm Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the already released Arianne chapter of The Winds of Winter.

Arianne crawled up the silver queen's body, and Daenerys kissed her own arousal from Arianne's lips.

"You've been with women before."

"Snakes, mostly," said Arianne.

*

Arianne left the queen's pavilion for her own more modest accommodations, and found Daemon Sand awaiting her.

The longer this siege went on, the less Arianne understood why her father had appointed Ser Daemon her sworn shield, she would have sooner had Areo Hotah or her cousin Obara.

On mornings such as this when the queen had kept her awake most of the night and the bastard of Godsgrace was keeping her from her rest she would sooner have had Elia Sand, the young lady lance, even.

"You've been with the queen all night," he said.

"When Daenerys takes the Iron Throne she will remember that the needs and desires of Dorne should be close to her heart."

Ser Daemon raised his eyebrows. "I hadn't realised that it was her heart you were trying to get inside."

"Do you need anything, Ser Daemon?"

"Your brother's bones have arrived from across the Narrow Sea. Barristan Selmy will bring them to you later on. I didn't think that you should see them unprepared."

It was an unexpectedly thoughtful gesture, and reminded Arianne that she and Daemon had been friends once. "Thank you."

*

Arianne managed to snatch a few hours sleep before Ser Barristan arrived, along with two Dothraki carrying a chest.

"Prince Quentyn died--"

Arianne considered it a mark of respect that Ser Barristan did not lie to her and say that her brother had died well or died painlessly.

"We will arrange to have him laid to rest at the Water Gardens. It is our father's favourite place, and Quentyn and I used to play there as children."

True enough, although they had never played together. Quentyn had been an unattractive little boy, who Arianne and the Sand Snakes had not allowed to join in with them, and then he had been sent away and become a shadowy presence who Arianne had believed was out to usurp her place as heir to Sunspear. She had never thought of him as a sister ought.

"Princess." Ser Barristan inclined his head and withdrew.

Arianne placed her palm on the lid of the chest and said, "What were you thinking, Quentyn? You were no dragon, no more than Aegon was in the end."

*

Arianne arranged for Jeyne Ladybright and an honour guard to escort Quentyn's bones back to Dorne, and she sat down to write a letter to Prince Doran.

 _Dragons_ , Arianne had joyfully written when Daenerys arrived on the shores of Westeros.

That was the last piece of good news she'd had to share with her father, for in addition to her dragons the silver queen had brought word of Quentyn's death.

And not long after that she'd had to write with news that Prince Doran's longed for sister-son was more than likely a fraud, and burned to death by dragon fire too.

*

The silver queen ran her tongue up the length of Arianne's spine and said, "I am sorry about your brother."

"I-- Quentyn and I were not close, Your Grace."

"I understand. Viserys was not all an older brother should have been, and there were times when I prayed to be free of him, and yet I grieved for him."

It is not the same thing, Arianne thought, Quentyn's faults lived almost entirely in my imagination.

"You were secretly betrothed to my brother, you know," said Daenerys.

Arianne knew that, and Daenerys knew that she knew; after all, Arianne had begun their liaison by entering the queen's pavilion, slipping out of her silks and saying, "I believe I am what was promised."

Quentyn had made the silver queen the same offer, albeit less dramatically. And unlike Quentyn, Arianne actually had the promised twenty thousand swords and spears of Dorne at her back.

"Do you regret it," Daenerys asked, "your lost chance to become queen of the Seven Kingdoms?"

"No," Arianne answered honestly.

Once she might have lamented that loss, might have thrown all the strength of Dorne unwaveringly behind Aegon so-called Targaryen in pursuit of dreams of queendom; but that was before she'd seen Arys Oakheart charge into Areo Hotah's axe, before she'd seen poor Myrcella's face laid open to the bone.

And, anyway, there was once another princess of Dorne who came close to becoming queen, and who met naught but grief and tragedy.

Arianne rolled onto her back so the she was looking up at the queen. "I am a princess of Dorne, and seek to be nothing else, I want what Dorne wants."

"And what does Dorne want?"

Arianne pulled Daenerys down into a fierce kiss, and thought, incongruously, of her father and his carefully laid plans. "Vengeance. The fall of House Lannister. Fire and blood."

*

The siege camp looked down on King's Landing, and Arianne looked out over the city. Nym was on one hill, her dear Tyene the other. Be safe, my loves, she prayed.

Myrcella was somewhere in the city too. Arianne needs must speak to Daenerys about her, and before the siege broke.

Trystane had sworn, with all the ardour of his thirteen-year old heart, to wait for his young lioness, and faced with his adolescent passion Arianne had promised to do what she could. She was shamed to say she had all but forgotten about it, but having seen Quentyn's bones off with no feeling greater than mild regret she was resolved to be a better sister to Trystane.

Daenerys was not Tywin Lannister, and Barristan Selmy was not the Mountain that Rides, but all manner of horrific things could happen to a young girl during the sack of city if strongly worded orders regarding her safety were not given beforehand.

*

Arianne broached the topic after pleasure when they were both languorous and at ease with one another.

"I could send her to Sunspear as a ward," she said. "You could strip her of the name Lannister, rumour says she's bastard born anyway."

Trystane was Arianne's heir, and he could not wed a bastard, but he could take the girl as a paramour if it was what they both wanted when they were older; and after Daenerys took King's Landing Dorne may be the safest place in all of Westeros for Myrcella.

"Princess," said Daenerys, pressing a sleepy kiss to her lips, "do you really think I'd harm a child?"

"No," said Arianne. Not deliberately, at any rate. She thought again of Myrcella's missing ear and ruined face. Small hurts, as this world went. But still Arianne's fault, however different her original intentions had been.

*

The silver queen's sellsword returned, and Arianne hoped that she would be asked to join them; Daario Naharis was a beautiful man.

It seemed that while Arianne's mind had learned the lesson of Darkstar when it came to beautiful dangerous men, her body had not.

She wondered if the queen still had a lesson of her own to learn on that front.

As she wasn't called to the queen's side or to her bed, Arianne walked the camp. She found that either by accident or design the patch of scorched ground where Aegon had died had been left clear.

"Do you mourn him?" Ser Daemon asked; her sworn shield had been shadowing her in silence.

"Only for my father's sake; I know he rejoiced at the possibility that Elia's son lived."

"Not for your own?"

Arianne suspected that was the cause of Daemon's animosity, not that she shared Daenerys' bed, but how easily she'd gone from Aegon's to the queen's.

So be it. She was not a Sand Snake trained from infancy to be a weapon, and she did not have Prince Doran's vast reserves of patience, but in this way she could serve Dorne.

"No, not for my own."

*

After Aegon burned everyone swore he must have been a false Targaryen, and that they'd suspected it all along.

The only man who may have been able to say so for sure was dead too. Jon Connington had been put to death after he'd infected three soldiers with greyscale while attempting to reach Aegon, to pull his prince from the flames.

This, at least, was true: Aegon believed a dragon was his birthright, and when Daenerys grew suspicious of the tale of his origins and would not grant him one, he tried to claim one for himself. He failed.

Arianne could see the dragons soaring over King's Landing, keeping the population in fear and indoors. She was wary of the dragons, and she avoided the queen's pavilion when they landed to pay homage to their mother.

The dragon may have three heads, but Arianne would not court death by believing she was one of them.

*

To see the silver queen ride the largest of her three dragons into battle was a sight to behold.

Daenerys kissed Arianne farewell as her sellsword looked on and smirked. She said, "After the city is taken you will ride down with your sworn shield?"

"I will," she said.

She would stay in King's Landing and see Daenerys take the Iron Throne. She would warm her bed and whisper in her ear. She would bide her time and play her hand well. She would be an heir to make Prince Doran proud.


End file.
